Leapfrogging Phenomenon and Regional Coordinated Development:Motivation Measurement and Impact Simulation
The uneven spatial distribution of innovative achievements has recently become a vital factor restricting regional coordinated development.Notably,the leapfrogging phenomenon is significant,which refers to the long-distance spatial separation between the source area of front-end R&D and the transformation area of back-end applications for the distribution of innovative achievements.This paper constructs a new economic geography model with two elements,three regions,and two sectors.Within the general equilibrium framework that incorporates a leapfrogging perspective,the model characterizes the leapfrogging phenomenon by examining the outflow of knowledge capital across urban agglomerations.It reflects the dynamic process of leapfrogging through changes in the equilibrium of supply and demand relationships between regions.Based on the inter-city patent transfer flow dataset covering 264 cities from 2012 to 2021,the leapfrogging source power and transformation power are calculated within the origin-destination framework.The following characteristic facts are obtained:①The leapfrogging phenomenon in China exhibits a spatial pattern characterized by"high levels in the eastern and western regions,low levels in the central region,and a concentration in the northeastern region".Its distribution structure is"sparse in the front and dense in the back"led by the Pearl River Delta.It also presents the"concentration of power levels"feature of approaching municipalities.② The leapfrogging phenomenon is prevalent across three major urban agglomerations,characterized by"strong innovation,heavy transformation,and fast speed".③The agglomerations of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region,the Yangtze River Delta,and the Pearl River Delta perform as"big out and small in","same out and in",and"big out and big in",respectively.Subsequently,a panel Logit model is established to estimate the leapfrogging impact on coordinated development between regions based on the city-pair dimension.Three key findings are as follows.① The leapfrogging phenomenon significantly promotes long-distance coordination between the source area and the transformation area,while the inner-transformation effect in the same urban agglomeration is not significant.② The north-south linkage effect and the central leading effect can effectively strengthen the coordination effect.③ The innovation-oriented mechanism and the government collaborative transformation mechanism enhance the leapfrogging effect by promoting inter-regional technological cooperation and innovation reciprocity,while the industrial cluster convergence mechanism has no impact.To balance the relation between leapfrogging and backflow,this paper further designs a leapfrogging backflow experiment based on the whole-local perspective for path simulation.Regarding the backflow effect,the one-way connectivity and two-way interaction between cities exhibit a trade-off and have potential implementation limitations.In terms of the backflow path,the government collaborative path achieves efficiency optimization for both one-way connectivity and two-way interaction.In contrast,the innovation-oriented path focuses on mitigating effects,while the center-leading path lacks stability,showing no significant improvement compared to the benchmark path.The main contributions of this paper are as follows.Regarding the research perspective,it addresses the practical difficulties and obstacles in the spatial transformation of innovative achievements through the lens of leapfrogging,a phenomenon characterized by unique Chinese attributes.Regarding the research data,this paper captures the leapfrogging phenomenon using the latest large-scale patent transfer data and provides an economic explanation.In terms of research methods,the emerging network analysis methods are combined with simulation experiments to systematically examine the leapfrogging backflow behavior,thereby concretizing abstract problems.Finally,targeted policy recommendations,such as classifying backflow and effectively promoting regional coordinated development,are formed.
leapfrogging phenomenonmotivation measurementachievement transformationregional coordinated development
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
